Despite what was stated in blog of 19th the regional branch of the W.E.A. are to allow the Barton class to continue despite the low number of students.
This was a new venture in that instead of the five-week course having a single theme each class had a separate theme under the general title of ‘History of not very nice things’ (with hindsight not a very good title!). The first topic was Horror, and this unit was presented last Monday evening, although it was not completed by he end of the session. The initial class exercise invited discussion and went well – e.g. students rank ordered words allied in meaning to ‘horror’ such as scary, terror etc. This led to an interesting consideration of how the definition of horror is, to an extent, to do with the physical evidence of experiencing horror e.g. ‘hairs on end’, ‘cold sweat’ and the biological reasons for these.
Then went on to two pictures portraying horror and their historical context Munch’s ‘Scream’ and Picasso’s ‘Guernica’.
Then onto some episodes in History – hangman W. Marwood, 1068 ‘Harrying of the North’, 1493 Princes in the Tower (sons of recently died Edward IV), the ‘Witch-finder General’ (this is the point we reached by the end of the session) and Maya Angelou’s autobiography.
Before this we had had a discussion as to whether the experience of horror was confined to the human animal or could be experienced across all, or most, sentient life-forms. So current issues re animal welfare were highlighted (see above picture – long-distance live farm animal transport).
The final bit of the session will home-in on nightmares.
One element in classes like this is to be interested to hear any personal experiences but not to demand them or present an expectation.